Internet on a Commodore 64

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/classic-tech/?p=182

There are apparently web browsers for the venerable C64. Most people would probably wonder why such a thing would ever be done. Well, I will stand tall and say "because it's there". I am tempted to bust out my old C64 just to try it.

However, I am pretty sure there is a catch. If I am not mistaken, at least one of these browsers requires the user to set up a (more) modern machine to be a gateway for the C64(s?) in question. As I understand it, the C64 genuinely is not powerful enough to render the web, even in the primitive form offered by these browsers. The gateway actually receives webpages and simplifies them to a form the C64 can understand and display. I am not even sure how much processing really goes on in the C64, I think it is mostly just a fancy bitmap viewer (which on the C64 is actually a fair amount of processing). I am not sure of this, however, and will find out. The C64 certainly is not winning any speed races and I think it would have trouble rendering even simplified pages. Moreso, it has almost no memory by today's standards, so even if it could slowly chug through the data a little at a time, it simply does not have the storage to hold all the data.

I am all about the C64. I had one growing up, and learned to program on it. Obviously, by today's standards it is crap, but I think it was a huge milestone in the 80s. IIRC it remains the best selling computer ever made. Which sounds surprising, but you have to remember that computers back then were designed and marketed as identical but unique appliances. As I write this, I am using a Compaq Presario C700. Does that mean anything to anyone? Probably not. I am sure the C800 (if it exists) is just an upgraded version, with a better processor, Ram, etc, but 100% compatible. Actually, I think this is actually a C700-xxxx or something, a specific computer in that line. If you go to Dell today, they have 8 different basic models to choose from. Even without customizing, no single model will sell the way to C64 did, and these models change every year. The C64 was made for more than 10 years. It was not compatible with other makes, although there was some compatibility between it and newer Commodore machines (only after commodore made a few incompatible machines that didn't sell at all). In this way, computers back then were like game consoles. They attempted to build up a following so that there would be a lot of software for that model, but were incompatible with anything else. Consoles today and then have followed this paradigm.

Anyway, back to the C64. It is always interesting to look back at technology in this way. In every possible way, the laptop I am on now is significantly better than the C64. It probably has as much processing power as a decent percentage of all the C64s ever made (and this is a pretty cheap computer). But, from a conceptual standpoint, the Commodore was a bigger leap. It was not the first, but it was early in the timeline of home computers. Before this, computers existed (for many years) but only as large machines that businesses and government could use. For the first time, individual users could own a computer and have it in their homes. Many common computing tasks today were possible then. Word processing, spreadsheets, games, and even internetish activity. It wasn't nearly as pretty, or as fast, or as good, but it was there. The "internetish" activity of which I speak was in the form of early services like compuserve. Quite expensive and very limited by today's standard, but they existed. To further illustrate my point, Compuserve in those days had a chat program. Just like today. Of course, they called it the "CB Simulator" which reflects the timeframe. To me (in some ways), it is a bigger step to go from nothing to being online than it is going from very primitive online to today's sophisticated computers.

I started to get into the Commodore in the early 90s. My dad had an old one lying around, and he hooked it up for me after I begged him to. I never had most of the peripherals. Only a couple of joysticks and a tape drive. The only prewritten software I had was on cartridge. At the time, I thought this was vastly superior compared to disk due to virtually instant loading. Maybe I worked at Nintendo in the mid 90s :) But I did use that tape drive a fair amount, to store programs I wrote and stuff I typed. Can you imagine typing in a program today? I always dreamed of having all the peripherals, especially a disk drive and modem. I never got them. A couple years later, we got a 486. It was thousands of times better, and I even dabbled in qbasic. Coming off the C64, and my complete lack of software for it, I thought that Real Men only wrote their own software. I actually thought qbasic was limited compared to the C64, although today I am not sure it was. Not too long after, a neighbor, who was quite the commodore enthusiast, gave me all his old stuff. Computer, disk drive, about 200 magazines, a huge number of programs, including the monthly disk from some of the magazines to save you from typing the progs in, to a lot of commercial software. It would have been a dream come true had it been 3-5 years earlier. However, the 486 trumped it so hard that after a few days or weeks of messing with it, I put it away never to look back. I still have all that old crap. Anyone wanna make me an offer?

Thing I hate: Old People Correcting my Grammar.

This is a while back now, but it pisses me off. I was telling my uncle a story, and I used the word "like", as in "it was like 150 pounds". He felt it necessary to correct me upon this word choice, telling me "it was 150 pounds, not like 150 pounds". Uh, no. The word "like" in this context signifies that I was not 100% sure of the exact quantity in question, and was therefore an appropriate English sentence construct. Interestingly enough, I am a college graduate, and therefore able to form sentences without help or corrections by overzealous relatives. Even more interesting, I am not your 16 year old daughter, who undoubtedly used the word "like" in every sentence.

New Blog, Again

Well, this is easier than hosting my own. Apparently, if you have a google account, it is super easy to set up.